Bellini, Giovanni [Italian, 1426-1516]

Fine Art: Giovanni Bellini: Agony in the Garden, 1459 [London] - agony_d.jpg [00/01]
Fine Art: Giovanni Bellini: Giovanni Emo, 1475 [Washington] - emo.jpg [00/01]
Fine Art: Giovanni Bellini: Madonna with Saints, 1505 [Venice] **with long comment** - madonna.jpg [00/01]
Fine Art: Giovanni Bellini: St. Francis in the Desert, 1480 [New York] - st_franc.jpg [00/01]
Fine Art: Giovanni Bellini: The Feast of the Gods, 1514 [Washington] - feast.jpg [01/01]
Fine Art: BELLINI, "Madonna of the Meadow" - madonna_meadow.jpg (0/1)

BELLINI, Giovanni
The Madonna of the Meadow
c. 1505
Transferred from panel
National Gallery, London

BELLINI, Giovanni
St. Francis in the Desert
c. 1480
Tempera and oil on panel
49 x 55 7/8 in. (124.4 x 141.9 cm)
Frick Collection, New York

BELLINI, Giovanni
Detail of: 
c. 1459
National Gallery, London

BELLINI, GIOVANNI
Madonna with saints
1505
Altar painting: oil on wood, transferred to canvas
402 x 273 cm (158 1/2 x 102 1/2 in.)
Church of S. Zaccaria, Venice

"When one enters the little church of San Zaccaria in Venice and stands before
the picture which the great Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini
(1431?-1516) painted over the altar there in 1505 - in his old age - one
immediately notices that his approach to color was very different. Not
that the picture is particularly bright or shining. It is rather the mellowness
and richness of the colors that impress one before one even begins to
look at what the picture represents. I think that even the photograph
conveys something of the warm and gilded atmosphere which fills the
niche in which the Virgin sits enthroned, with the infant Jesus lifting His
little hands to bless the worshippers before the altar. An angel at the foot
of the altar softly plays the violin, while the saints stand quietly at either
side of the throne: St Peter with his key and book, St Catherine with the
palm of martyrdom and the broken wheel, St Lucy and St Jerome, the
scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, and whom Bellini therefore
represented as reading a book. Many Madonnas with saints have been
painted before and after, in Italy and elsewhere, but few were ever
conceived with such dignity and repose. In the Byzantine tradition, the
picture of the Virgin used to be rigidly flanked by images of the saints,
Bellini knew how to bring life into this simple
symmetrical arrangement without upsetting its order. He also knew how
to turn the traditional figures of the Virgin and saints into real and living
beings without divesting them of their holy character and dignity. He
did not even sacrifice the variety and individuality of real life - as Perugino
had done to some extent. St Catherine with her
dreamy smile, and St Jerome, the old scholar engrossed in his book, are
real enough in their own ways, although they, too, no less than Perugino's
figures, seem to belong to another more serene and beautiful world,
a world transfused with that warm and supernatural light that fills
the picture."

BELLINI, Giovanni
Giovanni Emo
c. 1475-83
Oil on wood
19 1/4 x 13 7/8 in. (49 x 35 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington

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